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Presidents on Horseback

How Long?2 minutes

Military heroes who risked their lives in devotion to the nation have long been attractive presidential candidates. The image of a uniformed officer on a warhorse was a powerful symbol of leadership and executive ability. Presidents depicted in equestrian art include military heroes such as George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, and Benjamin Harrison. Warhorses like Taylor’s Old Whitey and Grant’s Egypt and Cincinnati enjoyed honored retirement at the White House.

With the invention of photography and the popularity of illustrated magazines and newspapers in the late nineteenth century, images of the presidents posed on horseback became a staple for photojournalists. Pictures of the chief executive and their families on horseback became a familiar subject for posed photographs. President and first ladies regularly rode horses for exercise and relaxation in public both in the city parks of Washington, D.C., and on vacation. This practice changed after World War II transformed security procedures.

President Zachary Taylor's Old Whitey

"A familiar figure around the White House and evidently a privileged character was the General [President Taylor's] favorite warhorse, which has borne him through many battles [in the 1850s]. 'Old Whitey' is a compact, hardy, well-proportioned animal, less of a battle-steed in appearance, than of the style usually defined by the phrase 'family horse,' slightly knock-kneed, and with a tail (I afterwards learned) very much thinned by the numerous applications for a hair of 'him for memory' ... But remembering the beatings of the great heart he had borne upon his back - the anxieties, the energies, the defiances of danger, the iron impulses to danger, it was impossible to look upon him without a throb in the throat ..." N.P. Willis in Esther Singleton, The Story of the White House, 1907.